The Unwanted Conti Bride. Tara Pammi

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      With a protesting moan, she stilled her mouth on his. The tips of their noses collided and a soft sigh left her. Hot breath kissed his hungry lips. Then she moved that mouth again. Testing and trying. This way and that. Halting thoughtfully and then hurrying along urgently when she liked the fit.

      Brown eyes met his. And the world stilled. Time and space narrowed to this minute, this space around them. Never breaking his gaze, she slanted her head and dragged a kiss from one corner of his mouth to the other.

      She took control of the kiss like she did everything else.

      And Luca let her take over. Let the scent and taste of her fill every hungry crevice. Let her imprint herself on him.

      Flames of fire raced along his veins when she licked the seam of his lips and probed for entry. Desperate, Luca opened his mouth under hers. The throaty sound of her gasp shivered down his spine. Never had he been waiting like this for pleasure. Never had he been the recipient.

      Suppressing every instinct to take over the reins of the kiss—he’d never waited to be pleasured—he let her seduce him. She obliged, stroking the inside of his mouth with bold flicks, teasing and incinerating. Took his mouth with a carnality that left him shaking to the very marrow.

      Christo, he’d never been so aroused by just a kiss.

      * * *

      The sound of footsteps behind them brought Sophia back to earth with a thud.

      Her mouth stung with the taste of Luca, her body thrumming with unsatisfied desire. The crisp hair on his wrists teased her palms.

      But she felt anything but exultant. She wanted to cry. She wanted to ask him to take her to his bedroom, turn off the lights and—no, not his bedroom. Not the place where he’d probably made love to a horde of lovers, each more stunning and thin and wispier than the next. Maybe they could slip away into that veranda, hide under the moonlight and he could kiss her a little more.

      She could pretend that he’d never broken her heart and that he wanted her just as much as she did him.

      Because when Luca kissed her, Sophia was always carried off to some faraway land. A land where she could be strong enough to be weak, where she could let someone care for her, where she didn’t worry about her family, where she was not mocked for who she was.

      Where a man like Luca didn’t have to be induced into seducing a woman like her...

      She hid her face in his chest. His heartbeat thundered against her cheek. He was warm and male, both exciting and comforting, something she hadn’t realized until this moment she missed.

      Sophia couldn’t dredge up anger for that kiss. Toward him or herself.

      His fingers wandered up and down her hips, questing and caressing. “I’d rather we kissed again, but I keep my word.” Deep and hoarse, his voice pinged over her heated skin. “So tell me, why do you wish to...”

      Suddenly, a hand on her shoulder pulled her from his arms, turned her around.

      “Tina, non!” she heard Luca shout dimly.

      Sophia didn’t see it coming. Someone slapped her. Hard.

      Her head went back, pain radiating up her jaw and through her ear. Tears blurred her vision and she blinked to clear them away. Pulling in a shuddering breath, she looked up.

      Valentina—Luca’s sister and Kairos’s wife, stood before her, her lithe, willowy body shaking with rage. Her entire face was mobile with emotion, turning her into a volatile beauty. “You...you tart!”

      Sophia raised a brow, refusing to show her dismay. “Tart, really?”

      Her composure seemed to only rile the younger woman more. “You’re determined to go through all the men in my family, aren’t you? First Kairos, and now Luca? And to think I felt sorry for you when Leandro broke your engagement.”

      “Basta, Tina!” Luca again. His arm around Sophia’s shoulders, he was a wall of lean strength against her. A dark scowl framed his features, his fingers rubbing against her arm in unconscious comfort.

      Against every rational warning, Sophia felt her body leaning into his.

      “You know the rumors about Kairos and her?” Tina screeched, her eyes filling with tears.

      “If there’s truth to them, confront your husband, Tina.”

      “Fall into her clutches, then. Maybe she will leave my husband alone.” Her black gaze raked over Sophia in a sneer. “Although I do not see the appeal.”

      Valentina left with the same fierceness as she had come in. Like a storm, leaving a minefield of awkward silence behind.

      Sophia untangled herself from Luca’s side and ran her fingers tentatively over her cheek. She thought she might be a little sick but it could be because of how much dessert she’d eaten in her anxiety tonight after the strict diet of the last two weeks.

      Luca pulled her to him; she tried to swat him away.

      He won in the fight for possession of her. She swallowed hard. Fingers on her chin, he examined her cheek. “I apologize. She had no right to behave like that.” His mouth became a hard line. All the charm, the wicked laughter, was gone.

      She waited for the inevitable question about her and Kairos, but it never came. But then, the one thing Luca had never been was a hypocrite.

      “Marriage to Kairos is not good for her.”

      She frowned but he didn’t elaborate. “Kairos can be hard to—” he raised a brow and she realized she’d jumped to her supposed lover’s defense “—understand.”

      “You feel sorry for her?” he said, amazement in his eyes.

      Sophia shrugged. Despite the sting in her cheek and the burn in her stomach at the comment on her looks, something inside Sophia recoiled at the vulnerability in Valentina’s eyes. A palette of emotions for Kairos, who was as hard-hearted as hell, to see. And everything was acted upon, too...

      No man was worth that self-doubt, that haunting sense of inadequacy, Sophia wanted to tell Valentina.

      Swift anger rose through her at Kairos; he was supposed to be her friend. Couldn’t he have reassured Valentina instead of using Sophia to keep his own wife at a distance?

      “It’s obvious that what I suggested is a disastrous idea.” She chanced a glance at Luca, greedy to the last second. She’d make sure it was another decade before she saw him again. Something in her clenched tight. “Forget what I suggested.”

      Without waiting for his answer, Sophia turned and walked away.

      And in that moment she hated all men.

      Antonio, for planting that horrible idea in her head, for using her desperation to promote his own agenda.

      Kairos, for using their friendship as a barrier against his own wife.

      Salvatore, for never giving her a chance in the company, even though he called her his СКАЧАТЬ